Coming soon!
We Need to Talk about Kevin as if written by Jason Reynolds and Tananarive Due meets Model Home by Rivers Solomon in an innovative twist on the haunted house novel: about a mother desperate to protect her sons from the twin specters of gun violence and otherworldly menace in their public housing project.
Nona McKinley raised three boys in the Hester Gardens section of Medford, Michigan, an impoverished community divided by those who follow their faith in God and those who turn to crime to survive. With her drug dealer husband behind bars and her eldest son shot to death at eighteen, Nona has devoted herself to ensuring her other children escape their brother’s fate.
Her second son Marcus is on the right path. He's a valedictorian heading to an Ivy League school. He can get out.
But then, strange things start happening to Nona and other residents: mysterious footsteps are heard when she’s alone, people have phantom encounters in the streets, unattended appliances go off at all hours. Even more concerning is the state of Nona’s living sons. Her youngest, Lance, is hanging around with a bad crowd, and Marcus becomes moody and secretive. Sometimes he even seems to act like a different person entirely.
Nona has her secrets too. Her affair with the married church pastor has been weighing on her conscience, but that’s not the only guilt haunting her. She fears that someone—or something— is seeking revenge for an act she made in a moment of weakness to protect her family. And now everyone in Hester Gardens must pay the price . . .
PRAISE FOR THE CURSE OF HESTER GARDENS
“Tamika Thompson’s The Curse of Hester Gardens is a bold and astonishing debut: expertly wrought, expansive and complex, tragic and redemptive. A heartbreaking story of a mother, a family, and an entire community struggling with supernatural dangers as well as the all-too-real threats of gun violence and systemic oppression. Poignant, chilling and immersive.”
—Christi Nogle, author of the Bram Stoker Award® winning first novel Beulah
“Tamika Thompson slays all expectations with her much-anticipated debut, The Curse of Hester Gardens, a dark gothic saga set in urban Michigan, where poverty and despair aren’t the only spectres haunting the projects. Thompson doesn’t pull any punches, crushing the reader with achingly brutal prose that lands every time, startling us with tragedy and truth, with the unrelenting, inexorable toll of grief and trauma. Yet despite the squalor, there is beauty here, Thompson leading us through the violence to the light. The Curse of Hester Gardens is a modern classic from one of horror’s best new voices.”
—Lee Murray, five-time Bram Stoker Award®-winning author of Grotesque: Monster Stories
“Everyone needs to read The Curse of Hester Gardens. This gripping novel fearlessly explores natural and supernatural horrors in a Michigan housing project and introduces a cast of incredibly vivid, complex characters. A great and nuanced story that also changed my perspective—I'll never be the same after reading it.”
—Ivy Grimes, author of Glass Stories
“Tamika Thompson’s voice is exquisite, and the story is carefully paced. Part history lesson, part hideous reflection, the souls of the dead wail as a haunting weaves throughout this emotional tome. The Curse of Hester Gardens is a testimony to art imitating life. Poignant and deeply unsettling.”
—L. Marie Wood, author of Unworthy
“Tamika Thompson’s debut novel adds a supernatural twist to a parent’s worst fears, from structural racism to gun violence, ultimately asking the question: What if your children had to pay for the worst mistake you ever made? As exhilarating as it is devastating, THE CURSE OF HESTER GARDENS had my heart racing until the very last sentence.”
—Lindsay King-Miller, author of This is My Body
"A powerful, haunting, and necessary tale in our current times, written with heart and soul and stunning attention to detail. Put this one at the top of your TBR list. I can't wait to see what the talented Tamika Thompson gives us next."
—Brandon Massey, author of Nana and The Landlord